


Bird and Scorpion

by For the Record (SakoAkarui)



Series: Animorphs - Tom AU [3]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-04 19:03:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3083849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SakoAkarui/pseuds/For%20the%20Record
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I really really hate you.</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

Tobias here. I just thought I’d put in a little note myself. We got around to reading Rachel’s thing, which was actually weirdly enlightening. I mean, I speak with Rachel often, but it’s not like reading someone’s personal account of battle or whatever you’d call what she did.

But I wanted to be very clear about one thing she said. I am not a casualty of this war. I may have messed up, but it’s not like I’m out. I can’t even be considered wounded. At this point, I’m the most experienced look out and reconnaissance man we’ve got and, when the mission goes down, I get them the information they need to get out safe. I am mission control.

So I am not a casualty. I put in just as much time and fight as the rest of them. And, yeah, sometimes I’m not in as risky a situation as them, but sometimes I end up in a tight situation when they’re out safe. So I don’t really want this pity from anyone, and I certainly don’t want it to be taught to you.

Whoever is reading this.

I knew I wanted to say that, but I didn’t think it’d really be enough. I mean, Rachel put out her emotions, and Tom wrote that account of Elfangor. Ax found that hard to read, but he prefers knowing what happened.

I should probably mention he’s typing for me. So this is actually both of us. I’d write for myself, but there hasn’t be a keyboard for talons yet. Ax says you won’t be interested in his perspective, being an alien, but I don’t think that’s true. Regardless, we’re working on this together.

We actually wrote these in stints. We finished this part up last, just to make sure you knew what you were in for. It was actually really helpful to get this out there. I thought I’d already gotten used to being a _nothlit_. That’s the official term, by the way, for someone stuck in morph. We don’t really have a human equivalent, so that’s straight up Andalite language for you. But I really did feel some closure to get this out, maybe because a lot of it happened before the Ax-man was here.

Anyway, I apologize for the wait after Rachel’s account, but here’s what I have to add. And, actually, I think I will leave this open ended. It’s a good place to leave a lot of these things that are in between the missions. Or during as well. But I’ll just keep it up as my little message board to you. Mission control, out.


	2. The Yeerk Pool

So when the rest of them were running up those stairs, I had been striking at the Visser’s eyes. I wasn’t really effective, though. He had sixteen eyes, after all. Ax has no idea what he morphed, either. But fortunately the Visser was so focused on Tom and Cassie and everyone that I was able to get some distance. None of the Controllers were concerned with me at that point. So I flew over to a building and huddled down.

I was really naive then. Tom had been on my case over and over about the two hour thing, but I hadn’t kept any track at that point. I didn’t know what time I had morphed, and I didn’t know how much time had passed. In fact, I hadn’t even been thinking about the time limit. I probably could’ve gotten out. I never talked with anyone about the pool, because by the time I had sorted through my own thoughts I realized all the ways I could’ve not gotten trapped. No one was watching me on that roof. I could’ve de-morphed easily. The pool complex was busy for a while. They were herding up humans and pulling them back to the pool. Once the Visser was over his temper tantrum, he ordered them to shut off all the exits. I guess if any hosts got out before then, they were fine. But they started screening people to make sure they were re-infested. I hope some hosts got out but I’m not too optimistic about it.

But it did calm down eventually. So if I had de-morphed, I could’ve probably found some roof access to get to ground level and just walked out, after they stopped screening people. I’ve gone longer without food before. Or I could’ve even tried to fly out through the top of the pool. No one looked up during my entire time there. I flew right over that cop’s head, and he didn’t say a word. The only time anyone noticed me was when I was attacking the Visser, and they quickly forgot about me. Ax says the hole has to be clear, so they can beam the Kandrona down through it. It would’ve been awful pushing up through the dead air, but I probably could’ve done it.

I was just too dumb at the time to realize. I was scared, too. I’m not afraid to admit I was scared. The others have only been quickly in and out of the Yeerk pool, but I sat watching it for hours, waiting for them to stop screening. The worst part was actually when I stopped hearing the screams. I could still hear people yelling, but I started to get angry, because I was trying to hear the human Controllers at the nearest exit, and the yells from the cages were distracting me. That’s whenI knew I’d been down there way too long. The point when you forget other people suffering, that’s the dangerous point. Even now it’s hard. I have to keep reminding myself what’s really at stake in this war, or I know I could just forget.

When I finally got the courage to fly out, it was morning overhead. Okay, I shouldn’t say when I got the courage. I actually had to try a couple of exits before I found one that didn’t need some mechanism to open it. Flew on a lot of dead air, so I know I could have flown up through the top of the pool.

The others complain often about the Yeerk pool. It’s one of the things they bring up. Cassie mentions it every time she talks about nightmares. But she just cuts off and stops talking. I guess it’s different for me. I was there so long that it stopped feeling like a nightmare. Which is probably way worse, actually.

Anyway, I read what the others wrote, so I guess this is my confession to you on what actually went on down at the Yeerk pool. I guess it’s not as much detail as you may have liked, but it’s what I have. I don’t even know what else to say. I guess I could respond to questions. But right now I don’t know what else to tell you. It was a bunch of Yeerks relaxing, talking freely for once about their real lives, and hosts with a short time to just be them. It is what it is, and we just have to focus on destroying it.


	3. Flying

Imagine your arms spread wide, as if ready to embrace the day, embrace your hopes, embrace your loved ones, but so relaxed and right that you could hold them for hours. Your arms never grow heavy and tired, and flowing from your arms is a stream of feathers, rustled by the wind but also carefully arranged. These are your wings, and the air buoys you above everything. The air is no longer a void, but a vast sea of freedom and agency. The world is below you, and the sun above, and anything that ever worried you, or troubled you, is stuck below in the odd, silly mazes people have built. You are floating, and you are rising, and you will not fall.

Flying is one of those things we always talk about, and I’m sure we’ll continue talking about it. This is probably because flying is amazing. I fly all the time, but I never feel exasperated when the others talk on and on about flying. They always have this smile when they come back from their bird morphs. Maybe it has to do with the limitations of being human that we all get such a kick from it. But regardless, flight is a spectacular thing.

And I’m not just going to say it. I’m going to tell you why.

First, flying makes you feel powerful. The first time I morphed into a hawk and pushed up into the air, it was like I could do anything. We always talk about obstacles in our lives as hurdles and walls, and I think it sinks in eventually. So when you can actually lift off, there’s this feeling that nothing can stop you. Nothing at all. Because you are literally rising above the things in your way. That test you worried over was seen as a brick wall coming up at you, but flying lets you bypass it easily. Sometimes the metaphor lends itself to a literal escape, I think.This leads a bit into the second reason. See, one of the big things about humans is we don’t like falling. Most people get nervous on a balcony or cliff if it’s high enough. I expect sky divers do what they do for the rush because _falling_ is terrifying. But flying isn’t falling. Flying is the defiance of falling. Flying is your ability to ignore your feeling of falling. So that ties back to flying is power.

It’s also pretty cool to get a different view on things. I’ve been shuttled back and forth, coast to coast, so I’ve clocked a lot of plane time. The most interesting thing is always looking out the window. I used to look at the fluffy clouds and try to make shapes out of them. It’s what all the cartoons did. Or I’d look down at the landscape below. Hawks don’t fly that high, obviously, but it’s still refreshing to get such a different look. A city looks really different from the air. The “good parts” of town aren’t very far at all from the “bad parts”, and everything snaps together like a puzzle.

There’s also the mechanics of flight. When I started I used to flap a lot. I just kept thinking that was what I needed to stay in the air and keep from falling. But after a while I relaxed, and the hawk brain took over. It knew to relax, stretch out the wings, and find a nice thermal to soar up.

Bringing it up there reminded me of this conversation I had with Ax. I had all these ideas Elfangor put in my head, and then there are many details about morphing. Ax doesn’t know everything, because he isn’t an expert on any of these subjects, but he did know about the animal minds thing. Apparently it was intentional. When Ax was going through training, they told the students to relax and let the mind take over. Ax morphed a bird himself for the training and the main goal was to let the bird fly. It keeps things natural.

Letting the bird take control makes everything much easier. The hawk mind knows how to float up on the air, and also how to dive.

Now, a dive is more like sky diving. Every feather gets pulled in, stream-lined down so the point of the hawk’s beak can hurtle straight for the earth. Fast as a car on the freeway easily. The thing is, for a human, this would be completely terrifying. But that bird mind, it knows it can fly. It’s not even remotely worried about falling and crashing. That’s the human fear, that being midair must lead to falling and death. The bird is just doing a dive, the kind of thing it does every day.

I just wanted you to appreciate why we are hung up over flying. It might be a consolation prize, but we take what we can get.


	4. Hunger

So I’ve been hungry before in my life. My aunt and uncle aren’t fit to be guardians, and sometimes I had to fend for myself to make sure I ate. I don’t mean like hunting, of course. I just sometimes went through my uncle’s wallet to get grocery food. People make it sound like going through someone’s wallet is bad on its own, but I think when you’re uncle doesn’t buy groceries, it shouldn’t be a moral issue to fill the fridge.

I felt different then, though. I was terrified my uncle would find out. I was terrified of everything back then. And I don’t think it’s the war that’s changed that. I mean, obviously after that day in the construction site everything changed. Then I was that kid, staring up at the sky in the middle of some field with no idea what was going on around me. But what I mean is fighting in the battles, and finding a way to stop the Yeerks isn’t what made me not terrified. I spoke pretty big when we were looking to go down to the Yeerk pool, but in my head it was just a thought. Elfangor put a lot of memories and ideas into my head, and I didn’t really think much about what it really meant. So I sounded brave, but really I was just ignorant.

What really changed for me was having to deal completely on my own. I look back now and it’s like my aunt and uncle were a crutch.

So my parents died, or at least that’s what I was told. I actually don’t remember being told either way because no one ever told me anything. I just remember being pushed back and forth between guardians who didn’t want me. So I guess that means my parents would have to be dead, or why would I be in this situation, right?

It could’ve been worse. I’ve always been that kid who was a little out of it, and I had bully problems. Not so much that I felt rock bottom. I had my own hobbies, even if I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I used to go out to this park by my aunt’s place and make up stories about all the people walking by. There’s more people out there, so there’s more stories to make. I always gave them happy endings. But my aunt could also terrifying. She once chased me with a kitchen knife. Not that she keeps any of them really sharp and she was drunk so I don’t think she could aim. I got away fine. I always preferred my uncle because he just ignored me. Anyway, I did my own things, and I got by in school. I was never a smart one.

So I was used to getting by. But I never really stood up for myself, either. I didn’t take control of what I needed, and I never sought out ways to get it. Even when I was taking money from my uncle’s wallet I would be sure to buy something for him because I didn’t want him to find out and yell at me. I actually told him I was going for groceries without telling him how I got the money. It sounds so stupid now. But I just wanted to pretend like nothing was happening and that I was like all the other kids.

The thing is, there are lots of kids who went through what I went through, or variations of it. So I wasn’t alone, and I’m sure some of those kids got a wake up call. Mine was coming up out of the pool and admitting I was hungry.

Like I said, I’ve been hungry before. I knew how long I could hold out, except a hawk’s stomach is a lot smaller. By the time I flew out of the pool I was already pretty desperate. I flew straight to Rachel’s. She was so happy to see me alive. Actually, I was surprised she was so happy. I didn’t think any of them cared much about me. So I felt bad asking for food, but I really did need it.

It was still weird, though. I was still working through everything in my head. I never morphed that much, so I don’t know what the others think. But I had that hawk mind digging into mine 24/7. The hawk wanted to hunt. Now I look back and think that was so sensible, but then it just freaked me out. So I went to Rachel’s, or Cassie, and got food that way. Once I asked them they started putting things aside for me. Marco and Tom never asked, but I’m guessing they just didn’t think about it.

Okay, that’s a lie. Marco made plenty of jokes so I know he at least thought about it. I just don’t think he really thought it through.

But then, completely by accident, the hawk just took over and I had prey in my talons. I had been on autopilot, just flying, and it happened really fast. I don’t remember anything except seeing the blood on my talons and flying out of there faster than a mouse. I was so thrown by it. I used to look at dead animals on the street, like roadkill or maybe a bird that hit a glass window, and it shook me up bad. I was never that tough. It took maybe five, ten more autopilot accidents until I just accepted it.

Hunting is actually much better than getting food from Rachel or Cassie. First, it’s easier on my stomach. But I also don’t have to fly in and hope they left out a tupperware or something. I guess the old me wouldn’t have been ashamed of it, but it’s actually nice to rely on myself. I do miss school, and reading, and movies, and going to the mall.

Okay, I miss a lot of things. But one thing I don’t regret is being the person I was then. If I’d been writing these blurbs back then they’d probably look really different. Probably these angst-ridden, confused entries that just go back and forth over and over. At this point I’ve been hunting so long I don’t care who knows or what anyone thinks. So what? I’m a hawk and I gotta eat.

That’s what real hunger boils down to for me. It’s when you realize what you need and decide to just take it. It’s not about deserving anything, and it’s not about feeling guilty. It’s just a need and a solution. I need to eat so I hunt. We need to win and so we fight. I could get stuck in the gray areas forever, so I guess I just choose not to. And I’m not ashamed to admit it anymore.

  


EDIT: We’re about to post this, but I had some thoughts while reading this. I’m not really over it. I guess I want to be, but it still really freaks me out, the hunting. It messes with me a lot, because I stop and think about the war. I mean, the Yeerks are just the tougher predators, right? But then I think of all the humans suffering. And I think of the rats dying. And then I’m a human stuck in a hawk body trying to deal. Not that things were better when I was human. I guess they were just different. I had problems then and I have problems now. I guess I’ll just keep figuring out as I go. I just thought I’d add this here. I don’t know, just to be sure you didn’t think I was heartless. Just sounded grim. Sorry about that.


	5. I hate you Georg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I really really hate you.

Whoever made up that stupid outlier Georg meme needs to be brutally punished. The Ax-man says it at least once every day if not fifty and it’s driving me crazy. It's not even a new meme it's so old so _why won't he let it die._

If I ever find you, I will poop on your head and leave mouse carcasses in your sink.


	6. Fingers are Cool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm giddy and about to go on a mission to break into my uncle's house. Don't judge me.

I hope I’ve endeared myself a little towards you. I know I haven’t, because I’m not really that type, but I stand a better chance here than in person. Red-tailed hawks get a bad rap for their stare. Who says smiling is necessary? Pfft.

Although, it is nice. Smiling. Typing. Hanging onto a branch like an ape. Being human is a nice thing.

Did I forget the good news that I’m typing on my own now? I miss a little how it was with the both of us working along, but the Ax-man is dead set against writing anything on his own behalf. Which is ridiculous.

That Ellimist. Rachel said she’d told you that big story about him. He’s a weasel and a half. Manipulative, rank dung that I am feeling so happy towards lately I could kiss him on the cheek.

Or whatever body he went with, I don’t know, nor do I care at this hour.

So here’s how it all went down. The Ellimist never just comes out and tells you what he’s up to. Oh, no. No no no, he just pushes you around until you’ve got no choice. Sometimes — this time — literally. Cheapest play in the book. But I guess from his level, it all just seems mundane and pointless.

Or maybe not. See, this wasn’t really ever about me getting stubby, dextrous fingers to talk with you. Although I will be doing that. I will be doing that A LOT. Much typing. But this was actually all about the Hork-Bajir. He’d said as much the last time we saw him. He said he wanted to preserve Earth — all of it. And here, well, he just wanted to add a Hork-Bajir Adam and Eve into the deal, since they don’t have their own world anymore.

Their names are actually Jara and Ket. Very sweet couple. It’s hard to be angry now about being pawned around. The Ellimist opened up a path for them to get out of the Yeerk pool, then left it up to us — really me — to get them safe. And I felt pretty clever, asking to be paid for my services. That’s what I did do. I asked him to give me what I really wanted, because, you know, I feel like I deserve it if he’s going to play toy soldiers with us. I really did miss being human. I love being a hawk, I do, but it’s good to run again, too. The hands are amazing. I never remembered hands to be this powerful. And taste.

I’m not the Ax-man, but my appreciation for food has definitely sky rocketed.

No, I wanted to talk about Jara and Ket. So he opened up this hole to the Yeerk pool out in the woods, which the Ellimist kept me flying over for some ten, fifteen minutes straight. I already knew something was up, then, and I was pretty peeved. But as we helped Ket and Jara escape — Rachel, Tom, Marco, Cassie, the Ax-man, whole crew on deck — I at least felt like we were doing a good thing.

And like I’d said, I’d gotten this promise from the Ellimist. He said he’d give me what I really wanted: to be human again. And then the nasty cheat tricked me and just gave me the power to morph again. And he chose the worst time. There I was, bolting as fast as I could to warn the others of incoming helicopters when the air off the chopper hit me down, straight into a branch, and my wing snapped.

A hawk with a broken wing is a dead hawk. The Ellimist even waited until a damn raccoon had me in the water, ready to tear my flesh out still alive.

That nasty, horrible, rotten, creep of nature. What kind of freak does that? Because what else am I going to say. Oh, hm, let me discuss this with you a bit, Mr. Ellimist. We should discuss the fine print while my liver is being removed. 

The best I can say for him is he did save my life. I got to morph the raccoon, the demorph back into my — uninjured — hawk form.

And I guess he made it up later. Through his cheat time magic he took me back to acquire my own DNA. So now I’m this hawk, who can morph, and has a unique human morph of this kid no one wants. I mean, the room I was in, at my uncle’s here, it wasn’t even really mine. The bed was old, falling apart, and I think it was only there because it’d be more work to toss it out. There were only a handful of things that were really mine, and I kept them safe, tucked away. No matter which relative I got sent off to, I always had all my valuables. Not valuable to anyone else, just me. Except…

And the Ax-man has perfect timing. He just walked up now, and by now, I’m sure I mean a minute before this posts. It occurs to me that my things are still stashed away. And, well, my home is wherever I lie my head, and that’s where my things belong.

Sounds like time for a little night mission - duo style. 

Bird and Scorpion out.


End file.
